Bowater site cleanup to cost $8.75m

A consulting firm advised the provincial government to test soil and water for contamination. (BEVERLEY WARE / South Shore Bureau)

The Nova Scotia government ignored advice to do soil and groundwater testing before buying the former Bowater Mersey paper mill and assuming all liability for future cleanup costs.

Comprehensive testing was the first recommendation in a 200-plus page report by Amec, an international consulting firm that has offices in Canada.

Instead, the government is relying on an in-house cleanup cost estimate of $8.75 million provided by the chief operating officer of Nova Scotia Lands Inc., a Crown corporation.

The estimate is contained in summary notes prepared last June by Joel MacLean in which he said his work was a “very preliminary assessment of the site based on a single visit and walk through, and very limited document review.”

In those same notes, MacLean told the province: “The Amec Phase 1 report being prepared for Bowater should be a much more comprehensive document and should expand and clarify on elements touched on in this summary. Best guess is environmental cleanup is in the order of $8.75 million.”

The report prepared by Amec was a Phase 1 environmental report based on a two-day assessment last June. It contains a series of recommendations, the first of which calls for soil and groundwater sampling at the site “to determine the degree and extent of contamination due to use as an industrial facility.”

It said samples “should be analyzed for metals, petroleum hydrocarbons and PAHs and PCBs.”

The Amec report contains six other recommendations, which government officials say have either already been followed or are built into the cleanup estimate.

In some cases, the work doesn’t have to go ahead because the site will continue to be used for industrial purposes, a centre for cleaner energy, bioenergy and forestry innovation.

Natural Resources Minister Charlie Parker said he stands by the government’s decision to proceed as it did.

No additional water or soil sampling was conducted because the area is going to remain an industrial site and it was determined there were no major contaminants present other than the ones already identified, Parker said.

“If remediation is necessary, if at some point that was ever not an industrial site, then we’d have to look further at it,” he said. “But the full intention is to have that as a fully working industrial site.”

Based on the information he has, Parker said he isn’t concerned about the decision to purchase the site without fully knowing what’s in the groundwater and soil.

“We’re trusting the professionals that worked both in our government and the consultants that we’ve hired. In their opinion, the worst case scenario would be that $8.75 million,” he said. “So we’re accepting that report. We’re accepting the Phase 1 environmental assessment.”

Opposition party leaders didn’t share Parker’s trust or acceptance.

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil called the decision to purchase the site before testing “naive.”

“No private sector entity is going to take that off the hands of the government without having a full environmental assessment, knowing fully what’s there and without looking to have the place reclaimed before they turn it over,” he said.

McNeil said the government has potentially exposed taxpayers to a “huge bill that would wipe out any real value” received from the deal.

While McNeil understands the desire to get a deal done, he said signing on without knowing the full contents of the soil and groundwater shows desperation.